Tres Leches Cake: Authentic Mexican Flavor Made Low Carb

Cinco de Mayo is coming up and you’re going to want this little tres leches cake on your table. It has all the melt-in-your-mouth creamy goodness of a homemade tres leches cake but with a fraction of the carbs! While this isn’t a cake you’ll want to eat everyday, with just 6 net carbs you can certainly enjoy it once in awhile without stalling.

I love tres leches cake! If you haven’t had it before it’s usually a vanilla sponge cake that’s soaked in a syrup made up of cream, sweetened condensed milk, and milk then topped with a whipped cream kind of frosting. It’s got around 122 grams of carbs, y’all. ONE-HUNDRED-TWENTY-TWO.

Holy Moly. That’s my carb allotment for almost two weeks. Oh, and with 860 calories you can plan on spending a couple of days on the treadmill. (Those nutrition facts from HEB’s website for their tres leches cake which is pretty darn good)

But here we are – a couple of weeks away from Cinco de Mayo. It’s a pretty big deal in my area, plus I love Tex-Mex food AND tequila so all in all it’s one of my favorite holidays. I have low carb recipes for margaritas and low carb recipes for Tex-Mex meals but I couldn’t figure out what to have for dessert.

Until I saw the tres leches cakes at HEB. Yum. I decided to create a cake that was the tres-lechesiest of tres leches cakes but leave out as many carbs as I could. I think I did pretty good. Like most of the recipes here, this cake is for 1 person. You can adjust the serving sizes and the recipe will adjust. I imagine you could make a full sized cake with this recipe and bake it at 350 until a toothpick comes out clean. I haven’t tried it so I’m not promising a thing.

I love my little one serving sized desserts because I don’t keep going back for more. When it’s gone, it’s gone!

Fold in about 1/3 of the egg whites to lighten the mixture. Fold until no streaks remain.

Fold in the remaining egg whites gently but thoroughly.

Spoon the batter in the prepared mug.

Microwave on high for about 45 seconds, or until the cakes are firm but still wet on top. DON'T OVERCOOK!

Leave the cakes in the cups for 3 minutes, then pour the soaking milk over the top until just the top of the cake is above the milk.

10. Let soak for 5 minutes or until you can’t stand it anymore.

11. Remove the cake carefully with a big spoon and let it sit on a paper towel while you fix the topping.

12. Top with the whipped cream topping and enjoy.

Soaking Milk

Mix all the ingredients together while cake is cooking.

Whipped Cream Topping

Whip the cream and the pudding mixture together until soft and fluffy. Add the syrup and whip until it’s the consistency of good whipped cream.

Notes

It's impossible to figure the nutritional values of the soaking milk so the values in this recipe are without the soaking milk. My cake soaked up about 1 tablespoon of the mixture. The whole amount of soaking milk has 262 calories and 1.8 carbs. You can measure how much your cake actually soaks up and figure it that way or you can just relax and enjoy the cake. Either way the carbs are negligible.